Friday, August 10, 2012

Steven Wilson

Long-time Cedar Mill, Oregon residents Dickson A. Janowski, 54, and
his wife Arlene, 49, were especially fond of their privacy. Their
somewhat deluxe split-level home, lo­cated in the 2300 block of
Northwest 119th Avenue, clearly illustrates that fact, as it is set
back 120 feet from the road and is surrounded by tall shrubs, with the
closest neighbor nearly 100 yards away in all directions. It was just
such seclusion, perhaps, that made it dif­ficult, if not impossible,
for the Janows­ki’s neighbors to hear the 12 or more gunshots fired
sometime around mid­night Sunday, February 17, 1985, that took the
lives of this upper-middle-class couple.
Roughly 12 hours later, at 12:30 Sun­day afternoon, the Washington
County Sheriff’s Department in Hillsboro re­ceived a telephone call from
a near-fran­tic young man who told the dispatcher on duty that his
parents had been murdered, apparently shot to death. The young man
identified himself as Kenneth Frederick Janowski, 18, and said that he
had arrived only minutes earlier. Because of the serious nature of the
call, as well as the young man’s near-despondency, the dispatcher told
him he would send depu­ties as soon as possible and instructed him to
wait for their arrival and not to touch anything in the meantime.
When the deputies pulled up at the Janowski residence they noted the
pres­ence of brown-paper grocery sacks that had been carefully placed
on the lawn, one after the other, to form an unusual trail leading away
from the house. The deputies were met outside by the young man, who
briefly told them what he had found after returning home that
after­noon. As he led them inside the well-kept house, the deputies
noted that there were no signs of forced entry from the front side of
the house. They agreed that the rest of the doors and windows would be
checked later, after they’d had a chance to determine the situation
inside.
Once inside, the deputies could see that the house had been
ransacked, ap­parently trashed by the perpetrators. Kenneth Janowski
told the deputies that his dead parents were in the master bed­room and
he pointed the way. However, he stayed behind at the deputies’ request.
When the deputies entered the bed­room they discovered, just as they
had been told they would, the bodies of the middle-aged residents,
Dickson and Ar­lene Janowski. There was no doubt as to the couple’s
identity — they had already been visually identified by their son when
he found their bodies. But the dep­uties did want to check the couple
for signs of life, just in case one or both of them had somehow survived
the shoot­ing.
Mrs. Janowski was lying on the bed, cold to the touch. Mr. Janowski
was ly­ing on the floor near the bed, also cold to the touch. Both had
been shot numerous times in the head and both were, the deputies
determined, quite dead. Whether they had been shot in other parts of
their body was impossible to tell at this point, and the deputies didn’t
want to move the bodies to find out for fear of losing or
contaminating any important evidence that might be present. Instead,
they sealed the residence and radioed headquarters.
A short time later, Washington Coun­ty Sheriff’s Department
Detectives Rob­ert Neilsen and Paul Lazenby arrived from the homicide
unit, accompanied by the sheriff’s department scientific in­vestigations
team and assisted by the Or­egon State Police crime lab. Also at the
scene were Washington County Sheriff William R. Probstfield, District
Attorney Scott Upham and the Medical Examiner, Dr. Ronald O’Halloran, as
well as addi­tional support personnel from the various agencies.
Detectives Neilsen and Lazenby first observed the master bedroom
where the victims had been killed. Blood was on the victims, the walls
near the bed, the bed itself, the headboard, the floor and so forth. The
pillow and mattress where Mrs. Janowski laid was saturated with blood —
literally soaked — and blood covered a large portion of the floor
where Mr. Janowski laid, the result of blood having poured out of his
numerous head wounds. In short, blood was every­where.

Instinctively, the seasoned detectives wondered from the outset of
the case why Mrs. Janowski was on the bed and Mr. Janowski was on the
floor. Did this indicate only one gunman? If so, it seemed likely that
Mrs. Janowski had been shot first while she lay sleeping, with Mr.
Janowski being shot second while getting out of bed in an attempt to
fight off or escape from the gunman. (If there had been more than one
gunman, the detectives reasoned that Mr. Janows­ki would not have had a
chance to get out of bed.) Mr. Janowski clearly had been shot more
times than his wife, a puzzling fact for the detectives. All in all,
the detectives estimated that at least 12 rounds had been fired from a
small-cali­ber weapon, with at least three of the slugs entering Mrs.
Janowski’s head. Just how many times Mr. Janowski had been shot could
not immediately be de­termined.
Why had Mr. Janowski been shot so many more times than his wife? Did
the killer hate Mr. Janowski more than Mrs. Janowski? Or did Mr.
Janowski simply refuse to die? Whatever the case, the detectives
reasoned that the killer would likely have had to reload his weapon
before finishing him off, a fact which made the killings seem even more
chill­ing and cold-blooded.
It was clear from the outset that the killer had intended for his
victims to die, that he did not want to leave behind any witnesses. Was
this because the victims knew their killer? The investigators
con­sidered the possibility, but the evidence at hand indicated this was
a stranger-against-stranger type crime, the most difficult type to
solve because of the ab­sence of a relationship between victims and
killer. Without a relationship to ex­plore, the detectives simply had to
rely more on physical evidence in their at­tempts to solve the crime.
With the crime scene restricted to au­thorized persons only,
photographs were obtained from a number of possible an­gles so that the
investigators would later be able to establish the exact position of
the bodies, furniture, conditions of the premises and so forth, so that
the possi­bility of confused or faded recollections could be virtually
eliminated.
The next step involved a general sur­vey of the premises, partly
accomplished during the photographing. The investi­gators went at great
lengths to take pre­cautions against contaminating the crime scene and
avoided disturbing anything of importance. Since the Janowski home had
been ransacked, the detectives and crime lab personnel knew that the
prem­ises would have to later be searched thor­oughly for fingerprints.
The investi­gators noted the items of misplaced furniture, broken items
and, of course, the items that were normal to the scene or were
otherwise not out of place. Foreign objects and items that seemed as if
they didn’t belong were also noted, to be col­lected and studied later.
While some of the investigators were busy collecting evidence from
various lo­cations inside the house, other investi­gators, primarily
medical specialists, re­moved possible evidence from the bodies. The
victim’s sleeping garments were carefully removed from their bodies,
each piece wrapped carefully and sepa­rately for transport to the
appropriate lab. Blood samples were taken from each of the victims, and
pipettes were used to obtain blood samples from the larger, wet pools
on the floor for later compari­son. Samples of head and body hair were
also obtained and placed in appropriate containers, to be used in the
process of elimination which would determine the presence of any hair
foreign to the house­hold, such as the killer’s. Although hair samples
alone are not sufficient to con­vict a suspect, such samples are helpful
in placing a suspect at the scene of a crime and sometimes can be used
as cor­roborating evidence.
Next, the bodies were placed inside black body bags and removed to
the medical examiner’s office in nearby Por­tland, where an autopsy was
scheduled for each the next day. Investigators at the scene carefully
removed the pillows, blankets and sheets from the bed after the bodies
had been taken away, and each piece of bedding was wrapped separately
and sent to the lab for later study.

A search of the interior of the house failed to turn up a murder
weapon. Like­wise, a search of the exterior premises proved to be just
as futile, and the in­vestigators presumed that the killer must have
taken the weapon with him for later disposal. However, during the
outside search the investigators collected the nu­merous paper bags
which, they theo­rized, the killers used to avoid leaving footprints on
the sidewalks and the soft, rain-dampened earth. They hoped,
natu­rally, that the bags would yield some important evidence, such as
fingerprints or shoe sole patterns, but the initial ex­amination
indicated the bags would prove useless in identifying the killer or
killers.
Early in the investigation, Detectives Neilsen and Lazenby
interviewed the victims’ son, Kenneth, and asked the usual questions,
posing them as gently and as sensitively as possible, consider­ing the
circumstances. Janowski, at times appearing to choke back tears, told
the detectives how he had found the bod­ies and called the sheriff’s
department. In response to their questions, Janowski told the detectives
that he could think of no one who would want to kill his mother and
father, as they had no enemies, at least none that he knew of. Janowski
told the detectives that he had lived with his parents, but that he had
been gone the previous evening up until the time that he found his
parents’ bodies.
He told the detectives that he left the house at 10:00 p.m. the
previous evening and had gone out “cruising” with friends on a popular
strip of Southeast 82nd Avenue in nearby Portland. While cruising, said
Janowski, he met a young girl, Maria Spinetti, with whom he had spent
the night. Janowski provided the detectives with Miss Spinetti’s address
and telephone number, and assured the investigators that she, as well
as other friends, would verify his whereabouts and activities from
10:00 p.m. Saturday, February 16th, to shortly past noon the following
day.
In the meantime, Detective Jerry Owsley, public information officer
for the Washington County Sheriff’s De­partment, announced that the
homicide detectives and their support personnel had not come up with
anything concrete regarding the murders of Dickson and Arlene Janowski,
but said that the detec­tives theorized that the couple were shot to
death “in what appears to be a residen­tial robbery.” Owsley said that
the de­tectives were pursuing several avenues of investigation,
including interviews with the victims’ neighbors, friends and relatives.
Later that same afternoon, Detectives Neilsen and Lazenby began
knocking on doors in their attempts to generate new leads. They asked
the Janowskis’ neigh­bors if anyone saw or heard anything. unusual in
the vicinity of the victims’ home from about 10:00 p.m. Saturday until
12:30 p.m. Sunday but, unfortu­nately, no one had. The detectives
can­vassed the entire neighborhood, from Northwest 119th Avenue to Maple
Hill Lane asking probing questions, but their efforts proved to have
been in vain. Not only had no one seen any strange cars, parked or
moving in the neighborhood, but no one had seen any unusual people,
ei­ther. And no one, it turned out, had heard the gunshots.
In a statement before the press later that evening, Detective Jerry
Owsley confirmed that the victims’ house had been ransacked, but he said
that detec­tives had not been able to determine if anything had been
taken. He said that detectives had been unable to find any signs of
forced entry to the house, and that no official time of death had been
determined. Owsley did say that the vic­tims’ wounds had been caused by
the same caliber weapon, but he declined to comment whether detectives
thought more than one weapon had been used in the slayings. He said
that the detectives had no suspects in the case, but reassured area
residents that the police were confi­dent of a speedy resolution to the
case.
The next day Detectives Neilsen and Lazenby were among the officials
gath­ered at the morgue in Portland to witness the definitive autopsy
performed by Dr. Ronald O’Halloran, the Washington County Medical
Examiner. At the con­clusion of the autopsy, O’Halloran con­firmed that
the multiple gunshots were the cause of the deaths and that no other
types of wounds had been inflicted.
It ‘was determined that Mrs. Janowski had been shot three times in
the head, and Mr. Janowski had been shot at least 10 times, possibly
more, in the head. With Mr. Janowski it was difficult to deter­mine
precisely how many times he had been shot because of the close proximity
of the wounds and the shattering of the slugs upon impact with bone.
Although 10 slugs were removed nearly intact, lead fragments indicated
the possible pres­ence of at least one other slug. Dr. O’Hal­loran, as
well as the detectives, declined to say whether the wounds had been
in­flicted with more than one weapon. The slugs, they said, were .22
caliber.
During the routine background check on the victims, the detectives
learned that Dickson and Arlene Janowski had lived in the Cedar Mill
area for the past 10 years, and had owned a beach house on the Oregon
Coast. Mr. Janowski had worked at a Beaverton-based electronics company
since February, 1957. At the time of his death he was employed there as
an electronic devices process engi­neer, a white-collar job that
earned him and his family a good living. His wife, Arlene, had been
employed at the Cedar Mill branch of the U.S. National Bank of Oregon.
Although the Janowskis gave an out­ward appearance of happiness and
good fortune, their lives were not without per­sonal tragedy, the
detectives learned. Al­coholism took its toll on the family, and brought
forth physical and emotional abuse among family members, relatives and
friends alleged. It was this alleged abuse that drove the Janowskis’
15-year-old daughter, Katy, to move out of their house and in with a
friend during the winter of 1979.
She returned home six weeks later, at Christmas, after having come
down with infectious mononucleosis. After Christ­mas the family went to
their beach house for a few days, where Katy’s condition worsened. Upon
their return to Cedar Mill, Katy was hospitalized, but she died during
the pre-dawn hours of New Year’s Day, 1980, from a ruptured spleen — a
rare, but not unheard of, complication of infectious mononucleosis.
After the death of his sister, Kenneth Janowski, then only 13, began
drinking. Although he entered high school in the top 10 percent of his
freshman class, Kenneth did not apply himself. Instead of taking an
interest in school, he in­creased his drinking, and he eventually became
interested in cars and motorcy­cles, all of which brought on
difficulties between him and his father. Much to his father’s
dissatisfaction, Kenneth drop­ped out of school in his senior year after
failing an economics exam.
As their probe of the Janowski family background widened, the
detectives talked with relatives and family friends in hopes of
uncovering information that could generate new leads to follow up. One
close family friend, George Per­kins, confirmed that the family had had
problems, including alcoholism. Although he said he never actually saw
any physical or mental abuse, Perkins said that “there were
communication diffi­culties between both Janowskis and their son.”
Kenneth.
“The Janowskis were very nice peo­ple,” said Perkins, “but they were
not highly motivated.” Perkins said that Dickson Janowski had been
disappoint­ed in Kenneth, which was really more of a reflection of the
relationship Dickson had with his own father. Perkins said that Dickson
Janowski had not seen his own father, now deceased, for approximately
16 years, in spite of the fact that his father had lived in Manzanita,
less than 100 miles from Cedar Mill. Perkins said that because of the
poor relationship be­tween Dickson Janowski and his father, Kenneth had
not even seen his grandfa­ther until 1982 or 1983.
“Dick was not real good at up-front communication,” said Perkins. “He
would let things go, then they would come back as major issues instead
of little ones…Dick was not so terribly dif­ferent from Kenneth…If
Ken had had a strong father who met the challenge of a bright boy in his
early years, there proba­bly would have been no problem,” said
Perkins. Perkins also said that the Janowski family rarely displayed
any emotion. When Katy died, “I didn’t see much of a reaction” from the
Janowskis, especially Kenneth. “I never saw the degree of anger that
must have existed” inside Kenneth, said Perkins.
As the investigation continued, the de­tectives kept coming back to
the trouble­some, unanswerable fact that there had been no signs of
forced entry into the Janowski home the night they were mur­dered. Was
it possible that Dickson had gotten up in the middle of the night and
had answered the door to admit his kill­er? Considering the fact that
the Janows­kis were murdered in the master bed­room, it seemed a slim
likelihood, and could only be possible if the killer had forced him back
into the bedroom before shooting Janowski and his wife. That could
account for the fact that Janows­ki’s body had been found on the floor
in the bedroom as opposed to having been found in bed next to his wife.

Although it was a plausible theory, instinct told the investigators
that it just wouldn’t wash. There simply had to be another answer.
After all, to paraphrase the words of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous
sleuth, Sherlock Holmes, “when all possibilities have been elimi­nated
what remains, no matter how im­probable, must be the answer.” It was in
that light that Detectives Neilsen and Lazenby continued their probe.
As the detectives questioned addition­al people who knew the Janowski
family, they kept getting a picture of an unhappy, often angry family,
with problems that seemed to center around Kenneth. Fami­ly friends
said that both Dickson and Arlene Janowski blamed Kenneth for the
problems with Katy and allegedly told him that he had been the one who
drove her out of the house when she decided to leave home at age 15.
Dickson and Ar­lene also allegedly told Kenneth that it would have been
better if he had died instead of Katy.
Additional investigation revealed that Dickson and Arlene Janowski
told Ken­neth that they were going to take his motorcycle, which he paid
for by work­ing nights as a cook but which was in his father’s name
for cheaper insurance rates, and trade it in on a new car for his
mother. Was that motive enough for murder? Coupled with Kenneth’s anger
over being blamed for his sister’s fate and his constant disagreements
with his par­ents, the detectives considered that it could be. But
where was the evidence? Kenneth’s alibi with Maria Spinetti had checked
out, and additional friends had vouched for his whereabouts the night
of the murder, as well. At this point in the case, even with the lack
of incriminating physical evidence, it seemed like the on­ly likely
theory, as all other leads had been exhausted. But unless the
detectives received a lucky break in the case they couldn’t touch him
for the murders, and they knew it.
Time moved forward with no signifi­cant results in the case. Weeks
slipped by and quickly turned into months as the frustrated detectives
tried in vain to build a case against Kenneth Janowski. Work­ing on the
presumption that Janowski’s alibi had been fabricated through the
co­operation of his friends, the detectives relentlessly attempted to
break one or more of his friends. Their efforts proved fruitless,
however, and by early May the detectives were beginning to wonder if
they were even pursuing the right sus­pect.
It wasn’t until late Thursday after­noon, May 9th that the homicide
sleuths received the break they had long been seeking in the case. As it
turned out, the break came as a result of “citizen infor­mation” when
17-year-old Sean Thomp­son called the sheriff’s detectives and told
them he had some important infor­mation about the Janowski case. The
ea­ger detectives hurried to the young man’s home to find out if what
he had to offer was worthwhile.
A little hesitant at first, Sean Thomp­son told the detectives that
Kenneth Janowski and a mutual friend, Steven Roy Wilson, 17, had talked
to him about a “get-rich-quick scheme” about three weeks prior to the
Janowskis’ deaths. The plan, said Thompson, “was to kill Kenneth
Janowski’s parents for money,” particularly their estate and money from
life-insurance policies.
Thompson also told the investigators that Janowski and Wilson told
him details of the crime after it had been committed. Thompson said that
Wilson and Janowski said that it was Wilson who initially shot the
victims in the head as they lay sleep­ing in bed. Three shots were fired
into Mrs. Janowski’s bead and two were fired into Mr. Janowski’s. But
Mr. Janowski, severely wounded, got up from bed and attempted to call
for help. That, Thomp­son said Janowski and Wilson told him, was when
Kenneth Janowski shot his fa­ther an additional eight or nine times.
That explained, agreed the detectives, why Dickson Janowski’s body was
found on the floor in the bedroom instead of on the bed with his wife.
Additional investigation revealed that Kenneth Janowski had actually
solicited a number of persons to do the killings. Several people
ferreted out by the detec­tives said that Janowski had offered $10,000
for the murders because he had a “deep-seated hatred for his father.”
There was also reason for the detectives to believe that a third party
had been involved by supplying the weapon and ammunition used in
carrying out the kill­ings.
With the newly uncovered witnesses, Detectives Neilsen and Lazenby
were confident that they had built a strong case against Janowski and
Wilson. They now had a witness who would testify, if neces­sary, that
Janowski and Wilson had talked about the killings prior to carrying them
out, and had hatred. Washington County District Attorney Upham agreed
that the detectives had built a strong case, and two days later, on
Saturday evening, May 11th, Kenneth Janowski and Steven Wilson were
arrested on charges of ag­gravated murder.

Janowski was lodged in the Washing­ton County Jail, and Wilson was
taken to the Donald E. Long juvenile home in Portland. A few days
later, Wilson was remanded to adult court, the result of a juvenile
court petition that alleged he committed the offense of aggravated
murder. The aggravated murder charges leveled against both suspects
stemmed from the fact that there was more than one victim, said D.A.
Upham. It should be noted that the death penalty may now be imposed in
Oregon on defendants con­victed of aggravated murder.
Although Janowski and Wilson were in custody, the investigation
continued as detectives sought the third person they believed had been
involved in the double homicide. That third person turned out to be
Lincoln James Pankratz, 22, of near­by Cornelius. Alleging that Pankratz
loaned Janowski and Wilson a .22-cali­ber rifle and supplied them with
ammu­nition, the detectives arrested and charged him with two counts
of aggra­vated murder. A .22-caliber rifle was also confiscated, which
authorities sub­sequently identified as the murder weap­on.
Faced with the threat of the death pen­alty if convicted, Kenneth
Janowski, through his attorney, agreed to plead guilty to two counts of
aggravated mur­der through plea negotiations worked out with the
district attorney’s office. Dis­trict Attorney Upham agreed not to seek
the death penalty in Janowski’s case for several reasons, including his
age, lack of a prior criminal record, the fact that he made a complete
statement to detectives and his willingness to plead guilty.
While incarcerated, Janowski told his side of the story, which was
similar to the statement he made to police prior to his negotiated
guilty plea. In his jailhouse statement, Janowski said that there were a
number of reasons for the killing, in­cluding the blame he received
from his parents for his sister’s death and the physical and emotional
abuse he said he and his sister suffered at the hands of their parents.
“They said I drove her out of the house…like it was my fault …which
wasn’t true,” said Janowski, recounting the episode when his sister left
home a few weeks prior to her death. “I loved her.”
On the morning of his sister’s death when his parents returned home
from the hospital, Janowski said he saw no tears or displays of sorrow.
He said emotion was rare in the family. “Dad went out­side to work in
the yard and Mom sat in the kitchen looking at the wall,” he said,
describing his parents’ reactions to his sister’s death. “We were all
like that. We had our little roles to perform.”
Janowski also told of how he quit high school, worked nights as a
cook and saved his money for a motorcycle, which his parents later
intended to trade in on a new car for mother. “I couldn’t handle that,”
he said. “I worked, worked, worked, for that bike…I used to fanta­size
about cutting their brake lines or that they would get into an accident
on the way back from the beach,” he said, re­ferring to his parents.
He said that his fantasy would have remained simply “a nice little
dream” had he not met up with Lincoln Pankratz a month prior to the
killings.
“I told him (Pankratz) what it was like (dealing with his parents)
and every­thing,” said Janowski, “and he said, ‘Oh, I can take care of
that.’ That got the wheels turning (with regard to the murder plans).
Eventually it became the first thing in my mind. I couldn’t think about
anything else. It made me realize how easy it could be done.”
Contending that Pankratz devised the plan for his parents’ murder,
Janowski said that Pankratz would “never commit himself.” Pankratz did,
however, agree to loan Janowski and Wilson the rifle used in the
killings, said Janowski, and purchased ammunition for the weapon.
Janowski said that Pankratz took him and Wilson to a rock quarry for
target prac­tice, where they shot at targets on the ground that
simulated two people lying in bed. The shooting was a “blatant,
imma­ture, dumb way of committing a mur­der,” said Janowski. “Once it
was done, I knew there was no way I was going to get away with it.”
Prior to the murders, Janowski said that the insurance money and his
parents’ estate was “…like a big bonus…Once it was done, I didn’t want
anything to do with the money.”
“I believe anybody and everybody is capable of killing,” said
Janowski. “It just takes the right thing. I wish the pub­lic was aware
that it doesn’t take a special caliber of person to kill someone. They
have to realize that murderers, most of them, are just people like
them…I wish I would have handled it differently. I wish I would have
waited and just made life miserable for them in any way I could,” he
said. “I just wish people would give me an extra second before they
judge me…I’m wondering myself how I could have done it.”
Prior to sentencing, a private investi­gator who is active in a group
called Adult Children of Alcoholics and has a background in mental
health counseling, did some probing and confirmed some, but not all, of
Kenneth Janowski’s claims made against his parents. Although the
investigator determined that Janowski and his sister never reported any
inci­dents of abuse to authorities, he did un­cover friends of the
family that said a certain degree of abuse had existed.
“They played mind games with Ken­neth,” said Donna Ross, a former
girl­friend of Janowski’s. “They would promise him something one day and
then take it back the next. Their word was good for nothing…I don’t
believe it (the killings) was right, but I don’t blame him,” she said.
At Janowski’s sentencing on Wednes­day, July 17th, his 19th birthday,
Wash­ington County Circuit Court Judge Don­ald C. Ashmanskas heard
defense pleas for leniency. The defense cited mental health findings
that it was common for children of alcoholic parents to hold feel­ings
of rage and violence towards their parents, often wishing they were dead
and, in some instances, even fantasizing about ways to carry out such
thoughts, all of which partially serve as a means of “emotional
survival.”
Following the arguments, Judge Ashmanskas sentenced Kenneth F.
Jan­owski to life in prison for his role in the murder of his parents,
setting a 30- year minimum. However, as provided by state statutes,
Janowski can petition the state parole board for a review of the 30-year
minimum after serving 20 years.
In the meantime, Lincoln Pankratz’s attorney, Andrew M. Rich,
disputed Janowski’s allegations that Pankratz was responsible for coming
up with the origi­nal plan to murder Janowski’s parents. However,
Pankratz told the investigators that he had been approached by Janowski
and Wilson to carry out the killings, and he had initially agreed. He
later changed his mind, though, but admitted that he supplied the rifle
and the ammunition.
In plea negotiations worked out with the district attorney’s office,
Lincoln Pankratz, after originally pleading inno­cent to two counts of
aggravated murder, agreed to plead guilty to the lesser charge of
conspiracy to commit murder. He stat­ed before Washington County Circuit
Judge Hollie M. Pihl that he had partici­pated in discussions with
Kenneth Janowski and Steven Wilson regarding plans to murder Janowski’s
parents.
Arguing against a prison sentence, Pankratz’s attorney, Andrew Rich,
told the judge that his client’s conduct with regard to the murders
“was reckless or negligent but not necessarily criminal.” However,
Judge Pihl disagreed, citing that this was an “obvious case for
incar­ceration,” and sentenced Pankratz to 10 years in prison. According
to the matrix system guidelines used by the state parole board,
Pankratz likely will serve only 30 to 40 months in prison.
At the time of this writing, attorneys for Steven R. Wilson have
appealed the decision to remand Wilson to adult court. If the remand
decision is upheld and Wil­son continues to maintain his innocence, he
will be tried in a court of law on charges of aggravated murder and will
face the death penalty if convicted. Pending the outcome of the
appeal, he remains incarcerated.
Editor’s Note:
Sean Thompson, Maria Spinetti, Don­na Ross and George Perkins are not
the real names of the persons so named in the foregoing story.
Fictitious names have been used because there is no rea­son for public
interest in the identities of these persons.
Case update:
Steven R. Wilson was, in fact, remanded to adult court and was found
guilty on four counts of aggravated murder. The court merged two of the
counts and imposed consecutive life sentences with 30-year minimums on
the remaining two counts, according to information found in Wilson’s
appeal documents. The Oregon Court of Appeals affirmed Wilson’s
convictions and sentences in August 2008.